CHINA: War & Hope

A fortnight after China's Nationalists and
Communists had parted in incomplete agreement (TIME, Oct. 22), a
Communist spokesman in Chungking said:

"This is civil war. If there is fighting there is war. [But] this war
isn't general; it is local. The difference between this war and real
civil war is that this war can still be stopped. There is still hope."

He referred to battles and clashes in disputed North China (see below),
in eleven (by Red count) of China's 28 provinces. In Manchuria,
Communist officers bluntly told U.S. newsmen that they intended to keep
control of that strategic region after the...